The report explores the potential for people who live with long term conditions to manage their own health and social care outcomes through a self-directed support package. At present, self-directed support is only available through social work, to support people with their care at home or in the community. This leaves people dependent on the NHS to meet all their health related needs, such as physiotherapy, daily nursing procedures, and preventative health promotion. Yet the support required to enable an individual to live independently are inextricably linked.

The ALLIANCE’s vision, set out in “Piecing Together Person Centred Support”, is for health and social care to integrate the support they offer to people who require both services. Through a collaborative approach to assessing a person’s needs and devising a support arrangement unique to meet their outcomes, people who are disabled and have long term conditions could have much greater autonomy over their lives and reduce their dependency on tradition health and social care services.

“The great divide between health and social care, and in particular the means-testing (or care tax) that still impacts social care, can only be healed by significant policy change. In time we will realise that we need to draw a new line with self-directed support on the one side and services that should be organised by the community (like emergency services) on the other. Hopefully policymakers will also see that the on-going use of means-testing in social care is holding back progress towards personalisation and integration.”